Saturday, May 18, 2013

Friday, May 17 - Oloron Sainte-Marie to Bedous

Breakfast at our chambre d'hôtes in Oloron Sainte-Marie was a continuation of the excellence of this charming place. We had freshly made crepes with peach yogurt and all the other usual French breakfast treats, pain and confitures. Even with this sumptuous petit-dejeuner, we were able to be on the road by 8:10am.

We choose to follow the road all day rather than the GR route in order to avoid the mud but also to be able to really see the mountain views. The chemin route took you along the wet river bed and up into the forest trails and you know what they say about not being able to see the forest for the trees.....it may be a nice walk but the views would be limited.

Just after noon we came into the lovely little town of Sarrance nestled in the foothills of the mountains and were happy to find a restaurant busy with lunch time diners. We joined them. Dayton had a wonderful mushroom omelette with salad, fries and an amazing roasted red pepper salsa. These are some of the surprises that make your day on the Camino. No rain also makes your day and fortunatley the rain held off until just an hour before we arrived in Bedous, so all in all a good day's walk.

In the Bedous Tourist Office we met up with Chris Slater again and, after finding our chambre d'hôtes we cleaned up and went back into town to have a drink with him and Eun-Hyung, the South Korean girl we shared a gîte with in Lacommande. The municipal gîte where they are staying tonight is a little suspect, not exceptionally clean or inviting. Our chambre d'hôtes is interesting. It is just a kilometre past the town and boasts an amazing vegetable garden. The house itself appears to be in a stage of transition. The hosts are very friendly and welcoming and accommodating; I have hot water for tea delivered to our room and they are making a vegetarian lasagna to suit me.

Bread delivery to your door.

We really are guests in a family home. Dinner was served to us to eat by ourselves but with our host sitting to talk with us, the hostess flitting in an out, the belle-mere coming in for an introduction and the two year old boy entertaining us with his portable toy massager. Quite the opposite to last night's sophisticated hopspitalitié but okay nonetheless. We tried to burn off some dinner calories with a short walk up along a very fast moving mountain stream to see some ponies and donkeys roaming on the steep hills and some pretty impressive cascading falls and then back for an early night to bed.